The Bubble of Fear

"I realized that none of what I feared was happening now, nor had it ever happened!"  --Being Zen by Ezra Bayada


In his book, Being Zen, Zen teacher and author, Ezra Bayada reminds his readers about practice with fear. While fear is a quite natural impulse, or emotional energy, often alerting and protecting us, it can be limiting and even crippling.
He writes, "…awaken curiosity, asking this practice question', What is this?' … Awakening a desire to know the truth of the moment through experiencing."

Noting that one cannot come into full awareness of the true so long as one engages in blaming, assuming, pouting or other non-experiencing behaviors, really avoidance behaviors in his view, he offers an alternative.
In staying with the moment, just this moment, asking, "What is this?' works with some practice 'like a laser in focusing on the experience of fear itself." He became increasingly aware that the pain generated through fear was simply due to his thoughts and his assumptions. He had 'burst his bubble' of fear, gaining clarity in the exchange.

"Unlike positive affirmation, this exercise is not a cosmetic overlay. It requires that we still see our thought clearly… It lightens the myopic and self-centered perspective that often accompanies the process of learning to know ourselves."

I Am That

"...One who is ascended has achieved [the] Christ's injunction to be in this world but not of it." --The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra


I am that,
You are That,
All this is That.

These seemingly simple statements, from the Upanishads of India are thousands of years old; together they express what Hinduism calls Moksha, or liberation. Some see Moksha as freedom in love, enlightenment or ascension. Moksha ends karmic bonds. It is a freedom to be empty, but emptiness is not nothingness.

Many persons commonly suppose "they are what they eat," and in a little way this is true but not literally. Because one likes ice cream, for example, or chocolate doesn't make one an ice cream or a chocolate; because cowboys ride horses that doesn't make them a horse either. Nor is one either male or female by the simple wearing of any particular article of clothing. The same is true with ones' profession; the job one performs on a regular basis does not define the soul or the body; so it does not create Moksha either.


So often we fall into these notions of defining ourselves in literal, unskillful ways. It's easy to do and for many the application of a label is comforting; it provides a box or a stage from which to operate our daily lives, but it is not Moksha which is without limits. Moksha initiates one into a new birth of wholeness, of fullness. It states quite profoundly I am That, you are That, all this is That. Mokesha draws one close to the Divine.

The seeking is done. You find God is within; love enfolds  into pure religious devotion. You are simply an observer, a witness or a seer to life's journeys. The moment you are able to look deep within and see that I am That, meaning you see your lightness along with your darkness, your virtues and your sins as one, equal-- everything that matters is now a part of Being itself.
In other words, I am Being, and not anything else. 'I am as I am; you may love me or hate me; I aspire to no other. I am only myself.'

You are That tells the seer that they too are part of the Creation, both sacred be-loved and the lover. Creation becomes personal.

All is That tells us that as part of Creation, co-creators, we are all intimately and divinely involved in infinite consciousness. The possible expands, and very much-- because you are so much more than what you eat.